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For the second time in as many days, we’d like to give a tip of the hat to ACSH advisor and Boston University School of Public Health Professor Dr. Michael Siegel for his essays on two different smoking-related policies. As we noted in yesterday’s Dispatch, Dr. Siegel’s perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine considered the problematic issue of mentholated cigarettes.

A new report which can be found here makes a devastating and overwhelming case that DDT spraying can save hundreds of thousands of lives every year and that UN and other NGO opposition to it is, as ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross puts it, “scientific fraud, as the authors document with copious evidence.” For any readers who may still have doubts about the issue, we suggest examining the evidence.

A business article published yesterday by The New York Times alerts us to a profound worry: FDA over-regulation of the medical device industry is driving companies in this business overseas to countries like China, India and Brazil. The approval process for new medical devices is not only more difficult and time-consuming in the U.S.

Previous studies have suggested that certain pain-relieving drugs, with the exception of aspirin and acetaminophen, may increase the risk of heart attack or death from a cardiovascular event. The drugs under suspicion are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs). Now a new study published in the American Journal of Medicine and led by Dr. Anthony A.

What are the top ten unfounded health scares this year?

New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley launched a new campaign this week to counter obesity in the city: smaller portions. Cut your portions. Cut your risk, one poster states, depicting an overweight diabetic man whose leg has been amputated. The campaign takes note of the correlation between increased serving sizes of food and increased obesity rates over the past several decades.

If we frequently promote useful smoking cessation aids such as smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes, it s because there are promising signs that these methods deliver a much higher quit rate than the methods that are conventionally promoted which have frustratingly low rates of success.

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are common enough, but a study just published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that doctors too often prescribe antibiotics for bacteria in the urine when a patient s condition does not actually warrant it.

In his TobaccoAnalysis blog, ACSH advisor Dr. Mike Siegel, professor at Boston University s School of Public Health, reports on the FDA s Center for Tobacco Products latest initiative to compile a list of the ingredients found in cigarettes and cigarette smoke. This endeavor, he says, is a pointless waste of time and resources, since there is nothing the agency can actually do with the list that would benefit public health.

Last week, we watched incredulously as the very popular TV personality, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former physician, continued to insist that there may be unsafe levels of arsenic in the apple juice parents are serving to their children. Despite the FDA and other experts stepping in to clarify that Dr.

In keeping with the unimpressive success rate of conventional smoking cessation aids, cytosine, an anti-smoking drug first marketed in 1964, has only an 8.4 percent success rate among smokers, according to the first large modern study of the drug published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers in Poland analyzed data from 740 volunteers who were accustomed to smoking 10 or more cigarettes a day.

Exciting results from a final stage clinical trial of an experimental malaria vaccine reveal that African children s risk of contracting malaria after being vaccinated was reduced by half.
Called RTS,S or Mosquirix, the GlaxoSmithKline-developed shot was administered in three doses to half of a group of 6,000 five-to-17-month-olds in seven sub-Saharan African countries, while a control group received other vaccines and not the malaria vaccine.

Radiation following breast conserving surgery for women with smaller cancerous lesions is beneficial in terms of both recurrence and mortality, according to the results of a large meta-analyis of 17 studies published in The Lancet. The analysis was performed by researchers from the Early Breast Cancer Trialists Collaborative Group.

Alyssa Pelish in Science Magazine, October 28, 2011
For the Democracy of Science

ACSH staffers have long known that the adverse health effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), according to the 2002 Women s Health Initiative study, were dramatically overstated. Despite this, the public response to this report was drastic: Based on the widely publicized results of that research, 93 percent of U.S. women ceased using HRT or did not obtain a new prescription.

New Vaccine May Give Norovirus the Heave Ho
By Josh Bloom, December 9, 2011

LigoCyte, a small biotech based in Montana has been working for years on a vaccine for norovirus (the so-called stomach flu, or cruise ship virus). And it looks like they may really have something.

Fibromyalgia is a syndrome that has long been shrouded in misunderstanding, and sufferers of this syndrome experience symptoms particularly chronic pain that can make daily life difficult. To shed some light on the nature of this disorder, a new, large study suggests that sleep problems are associated with developing fibromyalgia.

Some good news for residents of the Big Apple: New Yorkers can expect to live longer than ever before, and longer even than our fellow Americans, on average. The life expectancy for a baby born in 2009 has risen to an impressive 80.6 years, while the national average is 78.2-years.

Publishers and marketers of most children s books are finally being spared the headache that the 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) caused U.S. manufacturers of children s products.

Upending a lower court s 2010 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the biotechnology industry and determined that genes and DNA can indeed be patented.

Though it claimed the lives of more than 50,000 Americans in 2010 alone, colon cancer is actually a largely preventable disease when people adhere to the recommended screening guidelines. According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, there are three methods to choose from: either a colonoscopy performed about every ten years, a flexible sigmoidoscopy every five years, or an annual fecal occult blood test (FOBT) which can be performed at home.

After first learning of the adverse health outcomes associated with early elective Cesarean sections, we were pleased to hear that some OBGYNS put their foot down on such procedures.

Readers who turn to ABC as their source of news will get a very skewed impression of distinguished professor Dr. David Allison, head of the Section on Statistical Genetics at the University of Alabama and director of the National Institutes of Health-funded Nutrition Obesity Research Center. An ABC News article by Dan Harris and Maggy Patrick which was apparently pulled from the national TV newscast at the last moment accuses Dr.

Those suffering from blood clotting disorders will find welcome relief in the FDA s approval of a new anticoagulant, rivaroxaban, co-developed by Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG.

How do you combat obesity in low-income neighborhoods? Increase access to grocery stores that sell fresh fruits and vegetables, many public health experts have long advised. It turns out, however, that this policy may actually have less credibility than previously believed.